Videos

"Fine Thread" is a documentary on three young South Asian girls and how they adopted with their cultures while living in New York City.

This idea formed during my membership with the South Asian Youth Center, an after school activity. As an end of the year program, all the youth groups in South Asian Youth Center come together and present something that is much like a talent show. My group's presentation is this documentary. The three characters: Damandeep, Humira and Shweta are all part of the group as well, all lead by our mentor, Tanwi Islam.

Tanwi Islam brought filmmaker Adele Pham to help us create this story since all of us were High School students and had no filming experience. With the help from Brooklyn Filmmakers and our two mentors, this documentary was created.

Many people do not understand the definition of “race.” Race is something that divides modern human into categories based on genetic traits. What many do not know is that “race” cannot be genetically traced. This is because modern human subspecies do not exist; humans are actually among the most similar of all species. “Race” cannot even be defined by skin color. The issue with people not understanding the definition of race has big consequences. Race validates social inequalities as normal. Humans are 99.9% genetically identical to one another. Out of that little difference, 85% of human variation can be found in any different location, whether it’s in Korea or Iceland or anywhere. 94% variation can be found in continents. That means two people living in the same continent can be more different genetically than someone from a different continent. We can all trace our ancestry to Africa. While race does not exist, racism does. Racism has brought negative lighting in history, in slaving humans and unfair abuse based on unjustified racial categories in placing people in social classes. Racism has critical consequences when race doesn’t even exit.